On African Soil

3/7/o9  

Dear Lads and Lassies, 

Muli uli!  I'm writing this from the capital city of Malawi - you remember what that is, right?  I didn't take the short way, I took _______.  What's the answer, Jacob?  That's right, Lilongwe.  I'm writing this at 10:30 in the morning and you're sleeping.  That's because the time here is 8 hours later than where you are.  So if it's 10:30 here, what time is it there, Justice?

I saw snow in Africa yesterday.  Can you believe it?  We could see Mount Kilimanjaro out the window of the airplane on our flight from the country of Kenya to Malawi.  There was snow on the top of the mountain.  I looked really beautiful in the early morning mist.  I'm trying to send a photo I took with this entry.  Hope you can see it.

We are taking the bus north to a smaller city called Mzuzu today.  It will be good to leave this big, crowded, noisy  place.  We're looking forward to getting up to Livingstonia tomorrow.  can you find that on your Malawi map, Cam?  That's where we'll be most of the time here.

Hope it's going well there.  It was 72 degrees here in the outdoor garden where we ate breakfast - it's summer!

Best to you,

Mr. Pearson

Dear Boys and Girls,

Ms. B and I are in Amsterdam, waiting for our next plane which will take us to Africa.  Have Mrs. Loken show you where Amsterdam is on the world map. 

Amsterdam is a city in a country called the Netherlands or Holland.  People still wear wooden shoes here.  Sam, what continent is Amsterdam on? 

Amsterdam is an amazing city.  There are more bikes here than cars!  My kind of place!  The houses are tall and skinny as you can see from the pictures, and instead of streets in many places, they have canals.  What is a canal, Colin?  

Some people live in houseboats on the canals. 

It is a cool, drizzly day here, about 45 degrees.  Is that above or below freezing, Harley?  

I hope everything is going great in Minnesota.  I'm thinking of you all today, and I'm eager to show the students in Malawi the class picture of you guys that Maria took last Thursday.

I'll write more when we get to Malawi.

Yours truly,

Mr. P.

P.S.  Mrs. Loken, if you drag the photos out of this post and drop them on the desktop, you can click on them and they'll open in "preview."  Then, you can zoom in on them (I think you use the "view" menu) and make them fill the whole screen.